


The lady and the tiger

by irisdouglasiana



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Daniel I really am going to need that tranquilizer gun, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 12:14:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11691396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisdouglasiana/pseuds/irisdouglasiana
Summary: How many secret passages and trap doors did one mansion need, exactly?





	The lady and the tiger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [keysburg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keysburg/gifts).



> A riff on a line from "Question and Answer" by keysburg (which you should be reading if you aren't already), in which the team is discussing challenging urban situations and Peggy rather casually mentions lions and tigers. So of course I couldn't help myself.

_How many secret passages and trap doors did one mansion need, exactly?_

If it was Mortimer Hayes’ mansion, the answer was evidently a lot: the newspaper magnate and Council member had vanished without a trace as the Isodyne case was winding down, having shuttered his offices, dismissed his staff, and cleaned out his bank accounts. No one had answered the door at Hayes’ elegant Beverly Hills estate when Peggy and Daniel had arrived, warrant in hand, so Peggy had taken the liberty of jimmying the lock. It popped open with surprising ease—the first indication that something was perhaps awry. The second indication was the trip wire just inside the foyer that had been hooked up to a small canister containing an unknown but certainly unpleasant substance, which Daniel swiftly dismantled.

They nevertheless decided to forge ahead, with Daniel taking on the first floor while Peggy searched upstairs. It wasn’t long before Peggy discovered her first hidden room, tucked away behind a broom closet. Hayes apparently had been using it as a miniature aquarium, with tanks full of jellyfish drifting along in the gentle current. Next door in the study, she found a second room with dozens of Faberge eggs, which led to a long, darkened secret passage that opened into a windowless room. She switched on her flashlight to reveal a large rubber ball and a sandbox in the corner, but the thing that really got her attention were the deep gouges in the concrete floor and walls.

She held up her radio and was about to relay this information to Daniel, except he spoke first: “So, I think I just locked myself into the secret room in the guest bedroom closet. The door swung shut behind me and it doesn’t seem to open from the inside.”

“I’ll be right down.” And she would have left, but she suddenly had a terrible feeling that she wasn't alone. All the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Peggy set aside the radio, reached for her gun, and wheeled around. There was nothing there. She breathed a sigh of relief.

“This is strange,” Daniel continued over the radio. “Looks like Hayes has a whole stockpile of tranquilizer guns in here. Wonder why…”

Peggy heard the low, rumbling growl from somewhere back along the darkened hallway a moment before she saw the eyes, glowing green from the reflection from her flashlight. Peggy raised her gun as the tiger came into full view. _Well. That would be why_.

“Peg? You there?” Daniel asked.

“A little occupied at the moment,” she muttered, mostly to herself—with the flashlight in one hand and gun in the other, she didn’t have a hand to spare for the radio. The tiger moved into the room and Peggy edged away slowly, careful to not back herself into a corner or make any sudden movements. It watched her intently with its big yellow eyes, but it didn’t appear as though it was about to pounce. Perhaps it was a pet. She reasoned that if that was the case, Hayes would have filed down the teeth and removed the claws—an assumption that fell apart a moment later, when the animal stretched and yawned, revealing teeth and claws that were obviously very intact and also very pointy.

The flashlight revealed the outline of another door just to the right of the tiger. Peggy kicked the rubber ball down the dark passageway, hoping that the tiger would go after it.

“Peggy, what’s going on? Where are you?”

The tiger’s ears perked up at the radio. It did not follow the ball.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” she hissed. Then an idea occurred to her. She shone the flashlight on the opposite wall and moved it in a zigzag pattern. The tiger turned its head and watched the movement of the light, crouching down and wiggling its tail. The moment it jumped, Peggy dropped the flashlight and ran for the door. She slammed it shut behind her.

“I’ll need one of those tranquilizer guns, Daniel,” Peggy said into the radio after she caught her breath. “There’s a tiger on the premises.”

“There’s a—wait, what?”

“A tiger,” she repeated. She could hear it scratching at the door and wondered exactly how long it had been since it had been fed.

“You all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine," she panted. "I trapped it in another room.”

“You’d better not be pulling my leg, Carter."

"Is that meant to be a joke?"

"Would I do that?" His tone suddenly changed. “Uh. Hey. You know those big snakes, the ones from the Amazon? What are those called?”

“Anacondas?”

There was a lengthy pause. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

“Are you quite all right, Daniel?”

“Uh huh. Just peachy. It's not moving; I think it’s asleep. Oh. Okay, definitely not sleeping. D’you think a tranquilizer dart would work on this thing?”

“I couldn’t say,” Peggy answered as she headed into the hallway. “Oh, bollocks.” The tiger had emerged from the study—it must have gone through the door at the other end of the passageway, which she had foolishly left open—and it was padding along in her direction. She pulled out her gun again and inched sideways down the stairs, keeping one eye on the tiger. It waited on the top of the landing, tail waving from side to side. Peggy reached the bottom, and for a moment she thought it would stay put, but with a single graceful leap it cleared the railing and landed just a dozen feet in front of her. She tightened her grip on the gun, but it didn’t move towards her. Instead, it sat down and licked its lips.

“Daniel, I really am going to need that tranquilizer gun. Which bedroom did you go into? Not the dreadful one with the gold drapes and marble columns?”

She could hear his muffled voice from somewhere nearby. “Nah. It’s the one with the purple velvet curtains and the, um, erotic wallpaper.”

“The—oh. Yes, I see.” She backed into the room and the tiger followed, watching her every move with increased interest. It suddenly crouched down and twitched its tail, and Peggy placed her finger on the trigger and prepared to pull—

—and then there was a tremendous crash as Daniel fell backwards through the closet door and practically landed on top of her. Her shot went wild and the tiger yowled, jumped six feet straight in the air, and bolted.

“I found the hidden lever,” Daniel said rather proudly, propping himself up on his elbows with a wince. He smiled at her and she resisted the urge to smooth back an unruly piece of hair on his forehead. She hoped she wasn’t blushing, but judging from the grin on his face, she had a suspicion she was. _The mission, focus on the mission_.

“Excellent timing, Chief.” She stepped to the side to give him space to get up and peered inside the closet where the tranquilizer guns were stored. She took one off the rack, loaded it, and jumped as the snake slithered out past her legs and headed for the exit. All fifteen feet of it.

Daniel hauled himself to his feet and watched the anaconda go. “Guess it’s time to call for backup,” he said wryly.

“Agreed.” Peggy lifted up the tranquilizer gun and carefully poked her head into the hallway. There was no trace of the tiger. They exited the mansion cautiously, and both of them breathed a sigh of relief when they made it out the back door without further incident.

…that is, until they discovered the lion pit in the backyard.

**Author's Note:**

> If I were obscenely wealthy, I too would want a mansion with a Faberge egg room and a jellyfish aquarium.


End file.
